


a point where two worlds collide

by skyekingsleigh



Series: someday (however long it takes) [2]
Category: The Originals (TV), The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death Fix, F/M, Future Fic, JUST, Post-Canon Fix-It, because he promised, however long it takes goddammit, klaus doesn't die, or something
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:54:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24051664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyekingsleigh/pseuds/skyekingsleigh
Summary: He remembers the pain that comes with remembering her. Maybe that is the reason he forgets.
Relationships: Caroline Forbes/Klaus Mikaelson
Series: someday (however long it takes) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1735117
Comments: 8
Kudos: 56





	a point where two worlds collide

**Author's Note:**

> A product of a sleepless night. I had so much fun exploring Klaus' psyche with this one. God, he's a great character. Anyways. Title from Nothing But Thieves' "If I Get High."

Sometimes he forgets about her, when his hands are coated in layers of warm blood and flesh and the scent is strong enough to take him someplace else, someplace where the thought of her sun-gleamed hair and porcelain skin doesn’t make him feel guilty for something that comes as natural as ripping hearts from heaving chests. He even forgets about her for tiny little seconds, when he’s in the throes of pleasure with people as disposable as ants were to a booted foot, or when his senses become so occupied with the smell of oil paint and wooden chisel and charcoal that for so long allowed his fingers only the angles of her face to put on canvas, or the color of her eyes, but not anymore. He doesn’t do that now.

He doesn’t know if it’s the time apart that caused such a revelation, or becoming a father, or if his memory falters simply because he allows it to. He remembers the pain that comes with remembering her. Maybe that is the reason he forgets.

But there are other times. He’s sat upon the leather couch in his studio, sketches absentmindedly the shape of his daughter’s smile, tires of it, flips to a random page and there she is, an almost faded picture marring a forgotten sketch book he’s picked up randomly from his shelf. He’s forgotten how expressive her eyes were.

The pain is still there, but more distant. Dull. He wonders if she will entice the same emotions from him as before, traces his charcoal pencil along his drawing of her in hopes of reviving the faded lines, wonders why he’d even think differently. It’s a train wreck after that.

He scourges every sketchbook, every journal, every piece of paper that might contain her face, if only to revive her. She doesn’t deserve to be all faded lines hidden in some paper no one would ever see. It takes him but a week to finish retracing the drawings, re-shading the contours of her face and the tiny scrunches she gets in between her eyebrows when she frowns. He doesn’t get it, because he’s supposed to forget. She’s supposed to be nothing now; just someone different enough to make the big bad wolf feel but ultimately not brave enough to let herself do the same. Nothing. A smudge in his otherwise perfectly painted canvas. Muck.

At the end of it all he sits in the middle of the floor of his studio surrounded by her. All these years, and he’s still surrounded by her. It must have been close to fifty drawings at least, all detailed meticulously and sketched so precisely over the past decades. He can’t let himself create a new one, though; too afraid that it would be too inaccurate after all this time. So he just works and works on the existing ones until there’s not one flaw left. Until he can fool himself into believing they’re brand new.

He thinks the pain is less dull now, when he feels like he’s memorized each crevice of her face again, but he doesn’t dwell on it. Instead he gathers all the drawings and tucks them inside a leather folder, locks it inside his desk drawer, throws the keys outside the window as if he couldn’t just break the lock if he wanted to. He doesn’t go back to his studio for three months after that.

Sometimes he forgets about her, but he never really stops waiting for her. A glimpse of blonde hair on the street, a whiff of the same perfume she wore, and he finds himself perking up, tensing, waiting, as if the day has finally come, as if she has finally come. He recovers far too swiftly for anybody else to notice the change in his stance, but he knows it in himself. Of course he knows.

He’s waited longer for less. Caroline, she is everything. He’s no stranger to pain as well, having experienced enough not to be deterred by it. This, though–this pinching in his chest as if somebody is staking his heart with a white oak stake over and over and he just couldn’t fucking die, why couldn’t he just die? –This is different.

He catches her scent (or what he thinks is still her scent) in Vienna on his way to Paris. There’s an art exhibit there he’s anonymously funding, donated a few drawings of his own, even. Hope didn’t want to join, still trying to get a taste of what it truly is like being immortal without her father breathing down her neck. Klaus misses the kid, sometimes. They look closer in age now, but she’ll always be his little wolf. He lets her wander on her own, because he’d never force his family to join him or love him ever again. He finds it’s more painful that way, with the knowledge that without his idle threats they never would have chosen him in the first place. He’s trying to change.

He’s enjoying a French press when he smells her. It’s just a tiny waft of her scent carried by the Austrian wind, but it’s there. He spends what feels like eternity trying to convince himself it’s not real, but his resolve shatters quickly and he trails after the scent like he’s a lost man following the breadcrumbs that will lead him home.

She’s standing near the pier when he sees her.

Caroline.

And it’s been so long, hasn’t it? It’s been so long. And not just the years he spent after her. A thousand years before. A thousand years and–

Where have you been?

She sees him as well, beckons him closer with no trace of surprise in her face, only a small smile that’s as if she’s been waiting for him too.

“Caroline,” he lets the syllables roll off his lips, tests the taste of the letters in his mouth. It’s been too long since he dared say them out loud. Now the name echoes it seems against the whole bloody continent, shaking his stance, closing his throat up. But her grin only grows wider, and soon he’s crossing the road and they’re so close. They’re so close, and it’s been so long.

“You sure took your time,” she teases, and her light is ever so blinding, Caroline, even in direct contrast with the sun she outshines. He doesn’t say a word, opens his mouth to but nothing comes out. “I thought you would have chased me down for a couple decades before I gave in.” Why didn’t you, she didn’t say.

I don’t know, he would have answered. Instead he says, “Well, I needed to keep you on your toes somehow, love.”

She nods like she understands him perfectly.

-

Her kisses taste the same. Even when they’re pressed together like this, sweat sodden skin, naked save for the few necklaces around his neck, they can’t be close enough, so he presses even closer. He wants to ask her, why now? Why Vienna? Why him? But he’s so afraid. He’s terrified that he’ll say the wrong thing and it’s another ten or twenty years. He doesn’t want to forget about her anymore. Not when he just remembered.

And Klaus doesn’t deserve this, does he? He wants Caroline, feels his need for her deep inside his tough immortal bones and deeper still, down to the rusty and frail ones he used to have a thousand years ago when he wasn’t the monster he is now. But he doesn’t deserve this. He will kill her, destroy her light, taint her soul, and she would let him, he thinks. That’s the scary part.

But he looks at her, breath hitched, mouth slightly agape, and her smile–god, her smile. He looks at her and thinks, this. This is his downfall.

For being the strongest creature on earth, Klaus sure is a weak, weak man.

“Will you go?” He whispers to her. “After this, will you go?”

She looks up at him, one finger drifting up to trail a line from his nose down to his chin before letting it go back to laying on his lower back. “Do you want me to?”

He doesn’t answer her, only looks on more intently. He feels this weight on his chest. It’s crushing, but he’s never felt more alive. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to go on again afterwards.

“I don’t want to wait anymore.” She confesses, voice so hushed he wouldn’t have heard her if he wasn’t who he is. He doesn’t allow himself to understand her words lest he begins to hope for them. She tries to catch his eye, though, doesn’t stop until she succeeds. “I love you, Klaus.”

He can’t breathe.

And he wants to love her like this. She, unraveled beneath him with her fingers tracing unknown patterns on his skin that bring shivers with every swirl. He, panting in disbelief above her at the beauty she emits, the glow she brings him. He wants this moment buried inside his mind for all of eternity, wants to feed this memory his blood and kill it so once it wakes it has forever to exist and he will never forget.

He has loved this woman for so long a time now that having her say the words feels surreal. How does a monster love an angel properly? He only knows how to take and take and take. And now she gives willingly, slits her chest open and exposes her heart for him to rip out and he can’t move beyond letting out a single breath.

“Klaus?” Her voice contains a hint of hesitance now, after too many seconds of silence. He sees doubt and fear flit across her eyes but not of him. Not anymore.

He swallows the knot in his throat, wills his voice not to waver. “You must know, love, once we do this I won’t ever let you go again. A promise is a promise, after all.”

She only grins up at him, pulls him down for a kiss that could have taken an eternity. He doesn’t mind.

He doesn’t understand still, because there’s no void to fill but she fills his whole being anyway. Caroline and the contours of her face and the tiny scrunches she gets between her eyebrows when she frowns; Caroline and her light that outshines the sun.

He doesn’t understand the fear that comes with this, with love, the knowledge that she could be taken away from him and he’d never be able to cope.

He’s indestructible, but he pleads instead: let me die before her. Please, because he’s selfish and he’s scared and is this what love is? The indescribable bliss and contentedness of one kiss and the excruciating fear of something that could happen a second later? Caroline could handle it, when the time comes, because no one is truly immortal in this world. She’s far stronger than he is. She’s far more deserving.

“What are you thinking?” Caroline asks, frowns, reaching up to stroke his cheek.

Klaus doesn’t realize he is shaking, but he lets himself be more vulnerable anyway. “So you’re sure?”

Let me die before her, he doesn’t say.

I will love you forever, she tells him.

end.


End file.
